Have some Madeira, m'Dear!It's really an excellent year.Now if it were gin, you'd be wrong to say yes,The evil gin does would be hard to assess(Besides it's inclined to affect my prowess)Have some Madeira, m'Dear!"

Then there flashed though her mind what her mother had saidWith her antepenultimate breath:"Oh my child, should you look at the wine which is redBe prepared for a fate worse than death!"

> you can actually find this used quite a bit in discussions of stress and syllabication/syllabification.

scene - interior, consultant's room, view of LA thro' windowConsultant: So, tell me, what triggers this overwhelming stress?Patient: It’s the syllables, doctor – every time I see antepenultimate I get in a tizzy because I don’t know if they mean fourth from last or third from last!

but here's my question: preantepenultimate is often defined as 'fourth from last'; why isn't it third from the last?

tsory, didn't mean to ignore your question. We might some of us remember this cropping up from Anu a while ago.

It seems to me rather a confusion about what the label means – in other words, “third to last” may sound like it should be three behind the last, but the expression has grown up evidently meaning otherwise: ‘second to last’ commonly is clear as ‘the horse that came in ahead of only one other’ – it was (in this topsy-turvy inverted frame of reference) placed second, surpassed by only one in the race to the bottom.Hm, that’s prolly as clear as mud but.

Have some Madeira, m'Dear!It's really an excellent year.Now if it were gin, you'd be wrong to say yes,The evil gin does would be hard to assess(Besides it's inclined to affect my prowess)Have some Madeira, m'Dear!"

Thanks for reminding me of Flanders & Swann - underrated, and surely overdue for revival in perhaps a biographically based show...

I think the confusion creeps in when you tried to specify > antepenultimate: second? from the last [e.a.]

The common phrase I think is based on an elision:Penultimate is ‘second [compared] to last’ whilst antepenultimate is ‘third to last’, leaving preantepenultimate in ‘fourth to last’ position (or the ‘last excepting three’ as per OED).

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